Just come outside and leave with me
“Day I Die,” The National
did we fall in love the way we fall asleep softly and then hard reaching one for the other through dreams and tangled covers • this is our true i will die on you leaving you blue our days too few there’s nothing we can do this story of me and you • loving is not dreaming living is not pretending • did we fall in love the way we fall asleep softly and then hard reaching one for the other through dreams and tangled covers —P.L. Thomas
The more level they have me/ The more I cannot stand me
“I’ll Still Destroy You,” The National
we weathered winter once again the sun slipping away later & later daylight & hope expanding this winter like all winters was unlike any winter before unlike any winter ahead # i imagine late at night you do not understand the silence & shouting everything ascending into the trees completely quiet & afraid # how we huddle here like lovers entwined asleep hoping with spring maybe there will be drums maybe there will be horns maybe there will be singing —P.L. Thomas
The dead cannot call out to us. All they can do is wait for us to call to them.
A Man, Keiichiro Hirano
i have always disliked xmas
holidays and bow-wrapped gifts
the shortest daylight of the year
the seasonal depression
of being always a stranger
i have been losing xmas eve
social media reminding me
a crushed cycling helmet from 2016
a text message xmas morning 2020
my aunt killed herself the night before
i have not cried for my aunt yet
our fractured family tensions
quilted with abrupt texts and messaging
verbalizing the weight of suicide
the frailty of just being human
i have pervasive anxiety about that frailty
the shock of suicide reminds me of Camus
“that after a while you could get used to anything”
except of course those who can no longer
fathom simply waking up one xmas morning
i have so many mostly ineffable words
minutiae tenuous melancholia existentialism mundane
this language merry-go-round chiming out of kilter
her matter-of-fact obituary-life of 192 words
a 17-word text admitting “box cutter” and “throat”
—P.L. Thomas
Candor is incompatible with freedom.
The Naked Eye, Yoko Tawada
i am afraid neither of poets nor of polar bears none of this really has much to do with fear most of this i think instead is a matter of proximity i will never be close enough to a polar bear to realize that fragility i am terrified however of never again being mauled by poetry you see i will never walk across the snow covered ice trafficked by polar bears but i long to be lured over and over onto the thin ice of a poem —P.L. Thomas
What I want
All I really wanted
Just to live my life on high“I’ve Been High,” R.E.M.
i. <my body is failing me> my body is failing me aging in ways only my lover knows with the bittersweet awareness of intimacy and then briefly revealed disappointment i watch my lover paint her fingernails black her bare feet with toenails candy apple red if i took a picture to hold her/us there as if i could stop time from buzzing by it still would change nothing about me a body failing me and her there on the floor ii. <the bees returned> the bees returned a couple weeks into november a hurricane well to our south pushing summer-like fall back over us after a first taste of winter honey bees and yellow jackets swarming in the warming air while thunderstorms surrounded us overdressed in long sleeves and jackets iii. <this> i have told her everything i can so far into a yellowing life that less remains now but this: bee stings swell and ache in the cusp of fall and winter as if it were the heart of summer —P.L. Thomas
Too many have written about the dilemma of gods falling in love with mere mortals O the choices! O the sacrifices! to be a god smitten with a mutable human What bullshit however since these authors clearly have themselves never been in love O the choices! O the sacrifices! to be a human smitten with another human We need not imagine gods falling in love to understand that weight of loving singular and deep To hell with Zeus and Superman! I am tired of the posturing while I live in a state of decay regardless of the pull of my heart A god’s terrible sacrifice pales against the skin of human lovers embracing in full awareness of Death Promising despite it all “I will love you forever” even though we cannot give more than our brief lives —P.L. Thomas
Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright…
“The Tyger,” William Blake
Dost thou know who made thee…
“The Lamb,” William Blake
children, children, black&white
do you know who made you
made you black
made you white
made you neither
day&night
children, children, black&white
do you know who loves you
we will see you
hold you tight
our precious children
black&white
—P.L. Thomas
i am so tired
i can barely lift my arms
i struggle to carry myself
from one moment to the next
•
there are two photographs
of my mother lying in the sun
both dated JUL 71
she is so rail thin
i fear she could not stand
or lift a finger if needed
i am reminded of another photograph
of my sister and me on the floor
dated AUG 68
we are so rail thin
that my grandmother cried
when my mother showed her
•
we drive past a canopy of wisteria
in the early days of a pandemic spring
i am sure i know the word “wisteria”
because of my mother who loved purple
•
when i look at photographs now
there is a melancholia of recognition
everyone captured in these moments
wanted to live forever like a photograph
—P.L. Thomas
i am losing track of time and space
and 3-D
i am flattening out
flattened
here and square on the floor
like a tile
i misread the consequences
of gravity
thinning out to almost nothing
fretting
please be careful where you step
and stand
i cannot bear the weight of you
on me
in this grave situation i did not expect
so soon
i have worried myself paper-thin
useless
we will not fill up and drift away
it seems
but wither to almost nothing
collapse
•
if you find the time
and me here on the floor
lift me gently before
folding me into a paper airplane
take me to the tallest building
to send me on one last flight
—P.L. Thomas
I hunger to commit the act of touch.
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
we stopped shaking hands
we kept each other at arm’s length
we were so afraid of dying
we soon stopped living
we remembered each other’s finger tips
we dreamed about each other’s lips
no one was simply waving
everyone in fact was drowning
the shorelines left abandoned
beaches stretched like barren deserts
we stopped shaking hands
we kept each other at arm’s length
we were so afraid of dying
we soon stopped living
—P.L. Thomas
